Impossible Without It
by perverse-idyll
Summary: "I have complete faith in you, m'boy. In your judgement." The blue eyes blazed awake for a startling second. "Just get him." Contrary to Harry's expectations, finding Snape isn't the problem; figuring out the definition of 'get' is.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This story is AU after Half-Blood Prince. Horcruxes, yes; Hallows, no. I haven't entirely decided about the Elder Wand yet.

**Chapter One**

_"Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all."_ - Friedrich Nietzsche

xxxxx

Alone in the headmistress' office, Harry sat balancing a tea cup in his lap and toying with his wand, wondering how much longer he could stand to wait before Minerva returned.

She had owled him earlier that week with a casual invitation he suspected at the time was a pretext for a job interview, and Ginny had said, "No harm in finding out, is there?" So after nearly two years of keeping a polite distance, Harry had Apparated to Hogwarts.

He'd been genuinely glad to see McGonagall ("Minerva, please"), and the sight of her as headmistress felt unexpectedly right. After everything the students had suffered under Dumbledore and Snape, he could think of no one better suited to help heal the rifts and guide the school firmly back to its purpose than this woman of impeccable integrity.

The five minutes of catch-up that followed were a bit dodgier (yes thank you, Hogwarts was thriving, and amongst the younger set you'd never guess there'd been a war, which reminded her, did Harry and his friends still hold monthly reunions at the Three Broomsticks, and oh, was it true what she'd heard, that he'd been temporarily re-assigned to desk work? Well, yes, it was—although he neglected to explain this was because his first three partners after his qualifying exams—senior Aurors all—had all taken curses originally meant for him).

A subtle pause in the conversation cleared the air of small talk, a calculated shift from friendship to formality. Harry waited it out. Owning up with a wry smile to ulterior motives, Minerva laced her fingers together and treated him to a brisk, approving summary of his accomplishments (his record of success in instructing fellow students, the precocious ability to cast a Patronus, duelling skills, Auror training, and so forth), failing only to single out the main thing that led to him being here at all: _it was you who killed Voldemort_.

"In light of all that," she concluded, leaning forward, "I'd like to invite you to apply for the post of Defense against the Dark Arts."

"Oh, no," Harry said almost before the words had finished leaving her mouth. He could barely keep from bursting out with, _You're joking, right?_ "I mean, thank you, but no." When she seemed inclined to press the point, he shook his head sharply. "Sorry, Professor, but it's not going to happen."

Minerva raised her eyebrows and tilted her head quizzically, but rather than insinuate in Dumbledorean fashion that he would one day perceive the wisdom of her request, simply nodded, leaned back without fuss, and summoned a house elf to fetch tea and scones.

Tea no sooner arrived than there was a knock at the door, and she was called away to deal with a tiff between Filch and this generation's version of the Marauders. "Oh, bother," she sighed, rising and adjusting her hat. "No, Harry, don't get up. Tuck in, please, and I'll be back momentarily."

He watched her go and released his pent-up tension in a long breath. No hard feelings, but no. No way. Not now, not ever.

Once she was out of the room, of course, he started feeling twitchy. Three years on from the war, a hackles-raising sense of being watched still lingered here, and in the short time he and Minerva sat chatting, it had grown so strong Harry's neck was stiff from resisting the urge to whip around and catch the culprit in the act.

He shifted forward in his seat, helped himself to some tea, and tried following the familiar shouts and squeals of Quidditch practise wafting in through the open windows. When that distraction failed, he fumbled his rattling cup and saucer to the edge of the desk and stood up as if casually stretching, using the twisting motion to cast a quick look over his shoulder. It would be embarrassing if Minerva caught him being paranoid, but his Auror training—make that his entire life—insisted he pay attention to all instances of prickling unease.

Once upon a time, the tower room had had a hushed, eavesdropping quality borne of sentient portraits fake-napping on the walls. That sense of keen ears and gossipy elders was absent now. Only empty frames and a few damaged canvasses remained.

Harry remembered when he used to feel safe here, a confused teenager surrounded by mystery and authority, dazzled by strange relics, cheered by the twinkle in the headmaster's eye. And it still _looked_ reassuring. Early June sunlight slanted past the parchment-stacked desk, the heavy sideboard and curiosity cabinets. Clicking, chiming copper-and-glass instruments still glittered everywhere like the metallic bones of mechanical chimeras, souvenirs of the man who'd collected them and tinkered like the dotty old bird he wasn't.

Reminders of this sort were chief amongst the reasons Harry rarely came to visit.

Feeling a bit ridiculous, he levitated a scone and slowly pivoted, directing it across the room toward the opposite wall.

Right over there—covered now with a carpet—was the spot where the last incarnation of Tom Riddle had died. Harry knew this, despite having no memory of it. He'd been in bad shape after the final battle and to this day woke from nightmares flashing with curse-lights. That was better than waking with visions of his friends being slaughtered, but still. Bugger if he could remember a single thing about what had actually happened.

According to the papers, Ron, Hermione, and everyone else he met, he'd killed the Dark Lord. No one ever contradicted the account, so it must be true. The fact that he couldn't remember it—well, half the time it made him feel like a fraud.

Without that memory, that closure, he still caught himself searching hooded figures in Diagon Alley for that noseless, implacable face. Sometimes the stars at night would stir a faintly breathless, mounting agitation, until he realised he was watching for the glowing signature of a snake coiling through the open mouth of a skull.

He could feel it now, that dead spot where the last breath had left Voldemort's body, a blast zone in which magic no longer worked. Possibly the Dark Lord's struggle with death had sucked the magic out of the immediate area, and if that was the case, they should count themselves lucky the entire office hadn't suffered the same fate. Even so, it felt to Harry as if something trapped and malevolent still sat there, breathing slowly in and out. He wondered how Minerva stood being cooped up in the same room with it day after day.

The scone, silly-looking in sedate flight, fell suddenly to the carpet with a soft thump.

As if this breaching of the magical void tripped an alarm, a voice on the wall above whispered, "_Get Severus_."

Harry jerked back. Shock twanged through him like the wrongness of a wand being snapped.

"Please. Someone. If you're there. Whoever you are. Please. Get him. Get Severus for me."

Wand clenched tight in one hand and the chair's carved headrest digging into the other, Harry braced himself against the emotional recoil and raised his head to peer up at Dumbledore's portrait.

What was left of it.

The painting had been removed from its place of honour behind the desk and relocated to the opposite wall. Harry didn't blame Minerva for not wanting the figure in the frame spying over her shoulder. Still, it meant that every time she glanced up, there he would be.

"Professor?" He cleared his suddenly tight throat. The portrait hadn't spoken a word to him since the war's end. "Hello? Are you—is everything all right?"

A faint cheer from the Quidditch pitch coasted through the silence. "Is that … Harry? Harry Potter?" His name echoed oddly, as if two voices had answered almost but not quite in unison. Then Dumbledore's voice swelled with joy. "You're here! At long last. Why, Harry. Dear boy. I had no idea. Come closer so I can see you. Harry, please. Listen to me."

Hesitating, Harry clutched the chair and peered across the room into the smoke-blackened frame. During the final battle the headmaster's office had been ransacked and many of the portraits of past headmasters lost to curse-burning. Although Dumbledore's had survived, his painted surface was pitted, speckled with scorch marks that stripped pigment from canvas. Charred spots like open sores gouged his robes, ate into his face, and left his streaming white beard a ragged mess. Hardest of all to accept, the spell-fight seemed to have blasted holes in his once-unflappable mind.

"Severus," the portrait repeated. "Get Severus. Please. I know you can do it." Half his mouth was gone, and syllables seemed to flake from the painted lips, as if the struggle to enunciate sped up the process of disintegration. "You must—Harry, you must get him for me."

Swallowing down the impulse to promise him anything, anything he asked for, Harry let go of the chair and, staying well clear of the dead spot, crossed to stand below the portrait.

"It's up to you," the old wizard said, his spectacles flashing as if lit from within. The portrait's eyes were still a bright, riveting blue. "Only you can do this. No one else believes me, Harry. No one else will listen."

"But, sir," Harry said, trying to keep his voice steady. He'd had a lifetime's worth of _only you can do this_. "Snape's dead. I can't—he's out of our reach, Professor. He's— "

"Don't believe everything the Ministry tells you," Dumbledore cautioned, clearly unaware that he was talking to an off-duty Auror. "It's not always in their best interests to be truthful. I'll help you in any way I can. But you must— " The brief outburst of lucidity faded. "Get him for me." The urgent plea dwindled to a pitiful whisper. "Get Severus. For me, my boy. Harry, _please_."

Cripes, this was so bloody unfair. It was exactly the sort of memory that made Hogwarts an echo chamber of regrets, and here it was, incarnate, begging him to dive back into his nightmares again.

"By 'get'," Harry said reluctantly, "do you mean, bring him here? Or— "

He spread his hand wide against a fist-clenching impulse. "Or make sure he's dead, like they say." Marks left by the chair slat dimpled his reddened palm.

He wasn't expecting silence, and looked up to see Dumbledore's head drooping, his eyelids sliding shut. "I leave that," the portrait mumbled, "for you to decide. I have complete faith in you, m'boy. In your judgement." The blue eyes blazed awake for a startling second. "Just get him."

Then his bearded chin sank, his eyes closed, and Harry jumped at a touch on his arm.

"He woke up for you," Minerva said softly, easing up beside him. He'd been so engrossed he hadn't noticed the door opening. "Och, poor man. Did he ask you to fetch Severus? It seems his sole topic of conversation these days."

Not sure how to answer that, Harry followed her back to the desk and collapsed into his seat. He waited until Minerva had settled in and chosen a scone before admitting, "It's practically the last thing he ever said to me, you know. In the Astronomy tower. He told me to bring Snape— " He grimaced over the name. "Bring _Severus_ to him."

"I see." The headmistress was a cool one. Her curiosity, though sharp as a claw, barely pricked him. Harry swayed toward confiding in her, but for some reason he'd always found it difficult to be entirely open with his head of house. After a moment's tight-lipped concern—not the same as comfort—she sighed and busied herself halving her scone and applying a thin layer of lemon curd. "I won't deny it can be harrowing, those times he's most agitated. I've learnt to tolerate this fixation of his." She nipped a currant off the golden crust and stared pensively into the alcove, chewing. "Poor Albus and his dreadful propensity to scheme."

"Professor?" Minerva's faintly damning glance flicked toward him, and Harry ducked his head against the lingering traces of reproof. He'd always assumed she supported Dumbledore one hundred percent. "Do you think there's a chance Snape's still alive?"

Her tongue had just touched her lemon-dipped finger. She curled it inward and said carefully, "Why, do you?"

"To be honest, I'd rather believe him dead." For a moment reproach darkened her eyes, and he bristled. "Don't expect me to be sorry, Professor. Snape's toadying to Voldemort killed my parents. I got saddled with a pretty horrid childhood, and he took a starring role in that. Not to mention I was right there when he murdered Professor Dumbledore. Even if it was part of some grand plan, I still say he enjoyed doing it. He had to mean it, right?"

As he hammered out these bits of personal dogma, Minerva sat collected and unbending, neatly dispatching the curded remains of her scone. She didn't interrupt, and only looked up again, licking her lips over the last vestige of lemon, when he said, "That's why, if Snape's _not_ dead, I'd really like to know."

"So that you may do what?"

The warning note in her voice almost made him regret having been honest. Sod that. He hadn't dropped by to be made to feel like a sullen schoolboy again, even by his former head of house.

Brows pinched in Dumbledore's general direction, Minerva remarked, "I'm not the person to ask regarding Severus' fate. But I must say, your sudden disquiet revives mine. I'd put it down to Albus' constant demands worming their way under my skin. Now I wonder.

"Unfortunately," she used her next sip of tea and the subsequent clink of cup in saucer to punctuate her disapproval, "you have a stake in determining if Severus is 'not dead.' I'm rather inclined to hope he's alive, and I don't consider that a mere syntactical quibble. Which makes it difficult for me to help you, I fear."

Rising, she offered a cold, slim hand, and Harry took it. No, her hand was warm. The faint refrigerated whiff emanated from behind him, from the patch of flooring that had absorbed the Dark Lord's death.

"I'm so sorry to cut this short. While I was out, Filius brought to my attention a few matters I ought to address without delay. But I'm always delighted to see you, I hope you know that. Come back whenever you like. If you do happen to uncover some clue concerning the truth about our late lamented Slytherin, I'll be happy to hear it." Minerva squeezed his hand reassuringly and let go. "Assuming, of course, you feel inclined to share."

On his way out, Harry brushed one casual glance over Dumbledore's portrait, hoping a sliver of enlightenment might be forthcoming. The old man slept on, blackened and sagging, a heartrending last glimpse for him to take home.

Soles smacking down the revolving stairs, Harry did his best to drown out the echo spiralling in his head: "Please. Get Severus. You can do it, Harry. _Get him for me_."

xxxxx

"So," Harry threw out a few weeks later, sitting with his elbows on the pub table, hip to thigh with Ginny whilst peering over the rim of his fourth drink. The clamour of the Three Broomsticks on a Saturday night was nearly as good as a Muffliato, but it couldn't protect him from the memory of Dumbledore's voice, circling inside his head like a stubborn bumblebee. "Can we talk about Snape? About what happened to him, I mean."

"Buggered off and burning in hell, I imagine," Ron remarked. "Probably getting his arse Crucio'd on one side by Voldemort and stuffed with lemon sherbets by Dumbledore on the other."

Further down the table, Seamus snorted a laugh. "Oi, I'll drink to that." He raised his eyebrows and his pint glass, waggled the former and took a slug from the latter. "Me, I've not wasted a single thought on the greasy git since the war ended, you know?"

"Me either." At a polite distance down the bench from Harry and Ginny, Neville sat picking at the reddish crescents of Thestral dung lining his cuticles like chipped nail polish. Catching the smirks aimed at his lack of table manners, he snatched both hand down from the table to spell them clean and levelled an earnest look at Harry. "We should keep it that way, don't you think? Anything else means speaking ill of the dead, and that's—I don't know. Unproductive."

"Disrespectful," Kingsley corrected quietly from the far end. "Whatever your personal opinion of Professor Snape, remember he was instrumental in Voldemort's defeat."

Remember. Right. Remember _what?_ Reports said that Snape switched allegiance at the last minute, but no one had ever been able to explain why. He glared down at the scarred tabletop and let his wand slip from his sleeve just far enough to burn a line into the wood. He was tempted to draw a _Mors Mordre_—a small reminder, a talisman against forgetting—but Ginny touched his wrist, and he roused himself before his brooding killed the mood.

"Anyone here attend his funeral?" He drained his drink to disguise how agitated the whole subject made him. He hadn't eaten much that day, so his head was feeling a bit swimmy, and it took actual effort to sound curious rather than inquisitorial.

But Seamus had already gone back to talking to Dean, and Ron was leaning in close to Hermione, trying to tease her away from her book. Luna had wandered over from the card table, where she'd lost five Galleons and won a delicate poisonous-looking green flask half-filled with absinthe. Only Ginny, who leaned lazily against him, and Kingsley, who watched him with an air of mild concern, paid any attention.

"No one?" Harry said, feeling suddenly odd about it.

"It's been three years," Kingsley said. "You've barely mentioned Snape in all this time, but for the last two weeks you've been fixated. Something happen, Potter?"

"No," Harry mumbled. "Nothing. A few nightmares, that's all."

Kingsley drew a chip from the charm-warmed basket he was sharing with Neville, dipped it in curried mayonnaise, chewed with more solemnity than even the tastiest fry warranted, and surprised him by saying, "There was no funeral. A few members of the Hogwarts staff might have attended if we'd arranged a service, but in the end the department decided it would be best not to draw attention to Severus' fate. All goodbyes, if there were any, were said in private."

No funeral? No witnesses to the burial, then. But any suspicions along those lines would mean accusing the MLE of concealing Snape. Harry toyed with his empty glass and tried not to feel paranoid. "It just crossed my mind that no one talks about him anymore."

"I know what you mean, Harry." Luna sent him an sympathetic smile, then poured a tiny percentage of the green liquid into a clean goblet and held it up to admire the chain of bubbles rising from the bottom. "The Professor's not an easy man to forget, is he? But we can't spend all our time mourning our losses." She tilted the glass to her lips and blinked in disappointment. Harry was about to protest her ridiculous choice of words, since 'mourning' and 'loss' had absolutely no relevance to his feelings about Snape, but Luna conjured a sugar cube to drop in her glass and remarked, "A lot happened during the war that I just never think about. I can remember if I want to, but," she took another small sip, her expression brightening to one of cautious approval, "I don't want to. It's not that I bear Professor Snape any ill will. He's just one of the things I prefer not to think about, even if he doesn't deserve to be forgotten."

Hermione left off reading and raised her head, brushing a tumble of hair from her eyes. It had been annoying at first, the way she always toted a book along, even on outings like this one, casting Lumos over the pages so she could see in the dimmest, smokiest interior, but it was so very Hermione that it soon came to be pegged as her way of being social. She always sat to Ron's left so he could keep an arm around her waist without interrupting his wild gesticulations or his frequent recourse to a glass of whatever the rest of them were having. She also had a spy's talent for monitoring the conversation, and Harry wondered what Luna had said that had got her attention.

"It's sad that no one misses him, isn't it?" she mused, glancing from face to face until she reached Harry's and stopped. "No one ever talks about him. No one remembers. No one cares. It's almost as if— "

"No, it isn't," Ron broke in, one big hand landing hard on the tabletop, more emphatically perhaps than he'd intended. Hermione scooped her wine glass out of danger and glared. "I don't care if I sound like a tosser," Ron argued. "It makes perfect sense. I'm loads happier never thinking about Snape, and it's not like I have a problem going the rest of my life knowing I won't waste a single bleeding second on that arsehole when I could—I could be remembering Fred or Sirius or—bloody hell, let's start and end with Dumbledore, all right?"

He clapped a hand to Harry's shoulder and gripped it hard, as if Harry needed persuading. "Luna might be able to forgive him, right? But I'm not Luna. Can't think of anyone I feel more justified forgetting, frankly. I mean, look." His hand flapped in exasperation; Ginny ducked and said, "_Honestly_, Ron," when Harry's glasses nearly got flipped from his face. "Our memories of Voldemort will never go away. He killed our friends and families, he threatened our whole bloody world, and it's _our_ responsibility to make sure the next generation takes this Dark Lord shite seriously. But Snape?" Ron huffed in disgust and to everyone's relief settled back into drinking. "Shadows and dust, mate. It's what he asked for, and it's all he gets."

"Yep," Dean said. "No offence, Harry, but why should we care? Maybe it'd be different if Snape were alive, but with him dead I just can't be arsed to wank on about his crimes or boo-hoo over his last-minute change of heart. If that's what it was. He did us all a favour by sodding off to the afterlife, and I'm content to let history judge him."

"Fine. I bow to majority opinion. But," Harry rapped the bottom of his glass irritably on the table, "what exactly happened to him?" He ignored Ginny's testy whisper in his ear and went on fiddling with the glass until it ended up spinning out of his hand and rolling across the table. Kingsley levitated it back to him with a warning look. Damn. Well, at least it was empty. "I get that nobody cares, but _what_— "

"Voldemort killed him," Luna said softly, staring into her absinthe as if it held the key to the universe's secrets. "But you were there, Harry. Weren't you?" She raised her calm, curious, unembarrassed eyes, then blinked and offered the absinthe to Neville.

"Yeah, Voldemort killed Snape, and you killed Voldemort," Seamus said, as if reciting the answer to a test question.

This was going in circles. Harry shook off the consoling arm Ginny tried to put around him. What he really wanted to do was jump up and pace. It sounded plausible, but— "If I can't remember, did it really happen, though? To me, I mean?"

Silence descended, awkward or tolerant or impatient, depending, because Harry's memory loss and his inability to get over it were old subjects by now. Luckily Rosmerta sashayed up right at that moment, wand aloft and a refill for anyone still thirsty. "On me, my lovelies," she trilled, as she did at least once a night when they gathered here for their monthly reunion. Apparently having the Boy Who Saved Our Arses as regular custom was a drawing card worth its weight in alcohol.

"My round, please," Harry countered, and dug a handful of galleons from his robes. Rosmerta valued them at a glance, clinked them together in her closed fist, and gave him a perfectly wicked grin. Then she leaned over, interposing her laced bosom between Harry and Ginny, and tapped the rim of each standing glass. She Summoned Harry's empty and provided him with a fresh snifter half-filled with steaming, eye-watering amber. Kingsley, still working on his previous pint, covered the top of his glass and quirked a wry smile. Rosmerta straightened up with an obvious boosting of her bosom, put one hand saucily on her hip, lifted an inviting eyebrow, then withdrew with a swish of skirts, leaving Dean and Seamus staring after her.

Hunched forward, Harry put his nose to the sinus-prickling fumes and inhaled, then peered up, giving voice to the thing that haunted his dreams. "Do we know it was Voldemort? What if I— " His chest tightened, whether in excitement or dismay he couldn't tell. "Maybe _I_ killed Snape."

Kingsley's mouth pulled into a cheek-sucking grimace, and he ran an exasperated hand over his glossy scalp. "We've been over this before, Potter. You didn't."

"But you—not you, of course, Kingsley. I mean the MLE. They never tried to arrest Snape after he murdered Professor Dumbledore. They could have taken him out, even just abducted him, once he started his reign of terror at Hogwarts." Briefly, Harry imagined throwing curses at Snape, and his body gave an involuntary shudder. Maybe that was why he kept having nightmares in which flashes of green light figured. He admitted, "I wanted him to suffer for what he did. It makes sense that I would have been the one to kill him."

"Harry, what does it matter?" Ginny fetched his glass away and sampled the hot brandy, wincing at the taste before she hastily gave it back. "All three of them are dead. Voldemort, Dumbledore, and Snape." She coughed slightly and frowned. "No one holds you responsible."

"I do," Harry retorted, feeling harsh and messy inside, like a painting scraped down to bare canvass. Like Dumbledore's face, scabbed and faded on the wall. "No, I don't remember, and maybe Voldemort got to him first, but I can imagine it. I can imagine casting the Killing Curse. I certainly hated him enough."

"_Harry_."

By now spoiling for a fight, Harry lifted his eyebrows at Hermione in a belligerent _What?_

Marking her place with a finger, she managed a superb impression of the McGonagall deep-freeze. "You're talking about murder."

"What else would you call what Snape did to Dumbledore? Anybody here says 'mercy killing,' it's wands-out, I'm warning you."

Bugger. His tone was all wrong. He couldn't joke about this. He knew his blush was visible from the way Ginny was looking at him.

"She means," Kingsley rumbled, big arms folded across his broad chest, "that you're fantasizing about killing a man in cold blood."

"Who says it has to be cold?" Merlin, now the alcohol was talking. Abashed, Harry drummed his fingers, frowning down at the mark he'd burned into the wood. He sneaked a quick look around the table. Only Ginny flashed him a reluctant grin.

Rousing, Ron reached around and gave Harry a cuff on the shoulder that nearly knocked him face-first into his brandy. "You're sloshed, mate. Sozzled as a kneazle on poppyseeds." Seamus and Dean smirked, and Neville frowned doubtfully. Hermione was clearly biting her tongue, while Luna gazed across the room, a vaguely disappointed look on her face much like her response to unsweetened absinthe.

"However much you may wish you had, Potter, you did not, in fact, kill Severus Snape."

It was Kingsley's senior Auror voice, the one that commanded obedience in the field. Having laid down the law, he relaxed into affability again. "You were seriously messed up after the last battle, and I'm sorry. More than likely you'll never remember what happened. But trust me on this. Never doubt you were there, or that you did what had to be done."

Glass in hand, he scraped back his chair for a wider view. "Regardless of what you've forgotten, the fact is, you have friends around you and you'll always be remembered. This puts you one-up on Snape." He addressed this to Harry but clearly meant the rest of them to pay attention. "You have magic. And each other. You _won_. Try to take satisfaction in knowing you're still here, and," Kingsley gestured to their surroundings, "he isn't."

Harry turned his woozy head as if maybe Kingsley was wrong and Snape was hiding somewhere. The echo of Dumbledore's voice faded as he watched wizarding life bustle around him. These were his friends. This was one of the cosiest spots in Hogsmeade. Just over there, Rosmerta flirted with a couple of the lads. Reminded, Harry tightened his arm around Ginny and tucked her closer.

On display in every corner of the wood-panelled room was an eccentric jumble of wizarding fashions cribbed from different eras. Platters of steaming buns, bangers, and shepherd's pie popped into existence in front of famished customers. By the door, broomsticks were stuck in wall brackets bristles-up or slotted into a large stone urn. The inhabitants of various soot-smeared portraits, crowded into one door-sized painting placed conveniently over the gaming table, urged on the bettors as the dice rolled and the cards flew, or shrieked imprecations at the least signs of foul play. Amulets, heirlooms, books, and potions ingredients changed hands as often as galleons, and there were frequent booms or jets of water sputtering over the table, followed by a great flailing of wands and raucous spell-casting. The fireplace crackled cheerfully, and at intervals patrons stepped into or fell out of the Floo.

There were tears in Harry's eyes, taking all this in, and he blinked them away before anybody noticed.

Heaving himself to his feet, Kingsley downed the last of his stout. "All I can say is, put your mind at ease." His stern eyes travelled the circle of faces. "Snape's case is closed. I'd advise you to forget he ever existed.

"And now, if you'll excuse me, I have an early day tomorrow." Hermione had already shut and stowed her book. Luna and Neville were standing; Dean was counting extra Knuts onto the table. "Auror Weasley, I'll see you at the office. Superintendent Potter, please remember the Monday meeting scheduled with Madam Pettifer in the Department of Records, ten sharp. My friends, till next month."

About to turn away, Kingsley hesitated. "Harry." Leaning down, he brought the full force of his authority to bear on the three-sheets-to-the-wind boy saviour. "Be reasonable, for all our sakes. Let it go."

Lying awake next to Ginny that night, Harry decided, well, sure, he could be reasonable. He could attempt a thought experiment, here in the privacy of his bedroom. He could imagine that Snape had never existed.

Staring up into the darkness, he synchronised his deep breaths with Ginny's tranquil exhales and tried blotting the greasy bastard from his mind. It was a struggle. Snape's image, Snape's actions, had gone into making Harry who he was. The viper's tongue, the snap of robes, the eyes that could be cold and smouldering at once. The terrible mistakes Snape had made, so many of which had cost Harry so dearly.

He fell asleep repeating, _There is no Snape. Snape doesn't exist_, as if wishing hard enough could make it true.

He woke once, with the hollow, homesick remnants of a dream fluttering in his mind and the skin around his eyes tight and salty with tears. His sleep was stuffed with edges of memory that his head kept trying to fit together, confused and incoherent fragments being all that remained of that day in the headmaster's office, when he'd—

—_remember, Potter, you faced Voldemort, remember that you_—

Killed him, right? He slung an arm over his eyes, furious at the lie. With an Expelliarmus. Yeah, right. It still made no fucking sense.

Except in dreams. In the dream, he was trying to get away. In the dream there was always something inside his head, coming after him.

He didn't remember casting Expelliarmus. All he could lay hold of was a half-formed image of Voldemort on the floor, and the flare of deathly green. The grip of harsh, thin fingers on his face. A desperate voice spitting words. But he _didn't_ remember—he couldn't remember—so much had been taken from him, taken away—

_Remember, Potter. You killed him_. Snape's voice, recognisable even in dreams. Fuck that greasy bastard anyhow. He didn't exist. He had no _right_ to exist.

Hovering over the depths of sleep, he whispered, _Get Severus_. A promise, wasn't it? A purpose, more like. It sounded just the thing.

Morning arrived like a clout to the forehead. Merlin, why did he drink so much at these reunions? Shirtless, Harry staggered into the lav and squinted at the mirror.

"Squiffed again?" it cracked. "Take pity, sir, I beg you. I'm the one who suffers when you drag home looking second cousin to a Shrivelfig."

Not feeling up to repartee with a bathroom fixture at such an early hour, Harry leaned closer. His stubbled face stared blearily back at him. "No Snape," he croaked, still trying it on. A queer grin contorted his pillow-creased features.

"Gracious!" squeaked the mirror, adding nervously, "I was speaking entirely in jest, you understand."

Huh. "I wasn't," Harry told himself. This was more than just a drunken midnight experiment. It was an idea, evidently, whose time had come.

He had his face crammed into a wet flannel when the dream rose out of the blackness and snarled, _Expelliarmus? Potter, for fuck's sake!_ Scraping his dripping fringe out of his eyes, Harry stared into the mirror and thought, _He didn't die. He should have died. He's not dead._ It was dream-logic, the hiss of half-Obliviated memory, but it felt real.

He wished—Merlin, he _wished_ he could remember what had happened that day in the headmaster's office. The day the portrait burned. The day the Dark Lord died. The day he forgot what had happened to Snape.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

xxxxx

He waited a decent interval, until Ginny had Floo'd off to spend an afternoon at the Burrow. She'd been annoyed he hadn't wanted to come, but Harry had talked her down from the hair-tossing and lecturing and the threat of Bat-Bogeys. "Mum will be hurt, you know," was Ginny's parting shot. She'd wrapped her arms around him and dug her neat little chin into his shoulder. "I'll give them all a kiss from you, shall I?" Her playful nip at his neck was sharp.

"Oi, not if you're going to kiss them like that!" He inhaled the scent of her hair—less like flowers and more like sweat now that she spent half her time playing Quidditch—and pulled out of her arms, grinning. "I'll be along later."

Alone, he Apparated upstairs and summoned Dobby, then paced back and forth twiddling his wand as he thought about how to frame his request. "Sorry to ask on such short notice, but do you think you could poke around Hogwarts for me? I need to know where Snape's body ended up, and for some reason none of my friends has a clue."

A series of twitches percolated through the elf's nose and fingers, and his ears went up like flags. "Dobby is proud to be doing Harry Potter a favour, but he is thinking it best to let sleeping professors lie. Professor Snape is not liking Harry Potter very much, and Harry Potter is better staying far, far away."

"He's dead, though. Not like he can hurt me, right?"

"Harry Potter doesn't know that," Dobby pointed out, rather sensibly considering that Snape might be tempted to rise from his grave just to make Harry miserable.

"True, but I need to find him all the same. Will you help me?"

"Dobby is honoured to be doing anything Harry Potter asks." The elf wrung his knobbly fingers but made no further attempts to talk Harry out of it. "Dobby will be reporting back, sir, just as soon as he is hearing news of what is happened to Professor Snape." He bowed and adjusted his favourite striped sock a little more evenly over one ear, bulged a last anxious look at Harry, then departed with an audible twang of worry.

Feeling out of sorts, Harry wondered for a moment if what he was doing made any sense. In the vibrating silence, a clock ticked. It had probably been there all along, but now it sounded like the repeated snap of fingers trying to wake him from a trance. Wherever Snape was, perhaps a clock ticked there, too, tapping its beckoning nail on his last nerve. If Harry concentrated, he could almost see the git turning to stare suspiciously over his shoulder. Almost—he shut his eyes and summoned the harsh, sneering features to mind—almost see the room in which he stood and the shadows hanging over him.

But not quite. Slumping into the nearest overstuffed chair and raising a suspiciously dog-scented cloud of dust, Harry took off his glasses and pressed the heels of both hands to his eyes. His palms were unaccountably sweaty.

In the blackness, he saw only flashes of green.

xxxxx

The house elf grapevine was shockingly well-informed. Strange, under the circumstances, that wizarding families didn't take more pains to bribe and pamper their ubiquitous servants. Look how many secrets the elves were privy to that could knock wizarding society on its collective arse.

With that in mind, Harry resolved to stop corrupting his friend's innocence—just as soon as he'd confirmed that this was indeed the clue that would put him on Snape's trail.

"Spinner's End? Are you sure you heard that right? Huh. What's that when it's at home, then?"

The veiny ears wilted. "Dobby is terribly sorry, Harry Potter, sir, but he is afraid to be asking after details in case Willy is getting suspicious, sir, deciding that Dobby is a snoop and a spy, and thinking he is safer to be turning Dobby in."

That sounded dire. "Willy?"

Dobby nodded vigorously. "Senior house elf in charge of kitchens for Auror Shacklebolt and his family, sir! Dobby is knowing Willy since—since Dobby's former master is attending Hogwarts with young Master Kingsley." Oblique as this reference to Lucius Malfoy was, the elf trembled all over, then burst out, "Bad! Dobby bad!" and began yanking his ears and pummeling himself between the eyes.

"No, no, well done!" Harry said hastily. "I couldn't have asked for a better clue." Dobby paused mid-cudgel to blink up at him. "Absolutely smashing," Harry assured him, relieved when his friend lowered both spindly fists. "Thanks loads, Dobby, you've been a big help. This is exactly what I need. I'll take it from here."

The elf twined his fingers together and his face wrinkled earnestly. "I is sorry to be saying this, sir, but it is not like Professor Snape to be welcoming Harry Potter. He won't be happy if you is disturbing his peace."

"Trust me," Harry muttered, "making Snape happy isn't part of the plan," and in the longstanding tradition of mates-against-gits, he gave Dobby the smile the mirror saw every morning, the one that had put it on its best behaviour.

Dobby cringed and threw his arms over his head.

"What's wrong?" Harry said, but Dobby only whimpered and crammed his knuckles into his mouth, then aimed his head at the wall and ran smack into it. Harry caught him as he bounced off, listening in bewilderment as the elf babbled, "I is a bad friend, I is sorry, sorry, Dobby should not be thinking such things. Harry Potter is good, Harry Potter is kind— "

A few calming words later and the air snapped with the hasty pop of departure, as if Dobby couldn't get out of his presence fast enough.

Harry scowled. Fucking Snape. It was his all fault, naturally.

xxxxx

After poking around in the Ministry records and finding that all documents relating to Snape turned to alphabet soup when he opened them, Harry had the brilliant idea of consulting a Muggle library. The librarians were initially sceptical of his incompetence, but they quickly set him right on how to use the records to track locales and research wedding and birth notices. It impressed him how quickly they managed to pinpoint the address—not terribly far, it turned out, from where his mum had grown up, and wasn't _that_ a disturbing thought.

His invisibility cloak bundled under one arm, Harry found the wizarding tearoom nearest his destination and Floo'd to it. He emerged from prim, mock-Victorian swank into the dreary business district of an industrial town. Map in hand, he legged it frantically after a bus, swung aboard, and fell back into his seat, frazzled with apprehension as they lurched into traffic. After much gear-shifting and off-loading of passengers—including, thank Merlin, a bloke whose radio volume was so massive it blasted Harry's eardrums even through a headset—the big diesel vehicle, vinyl tape bandaging its vandalised seats, nosed sedately onto a canal road and made headway, groaning every time it pulled to the kerb and braked downward with an hydraulic hiss.

Out the window, the clouds hung in thick, smoke-coloured blobs, cooling the light to mid-winter levels. The streets narrowed progressively after every stop, skinny municipal row houses banding together, thin dog-walks of roadway between gutterless pavements.

It figured Snape would choose to roost in some gloomy offshoot of industrial downslide, though Harry found it hard to imagine him suffering the infringement of so much Muggleness meekly.

He got so caught up in rubbernecking he nearly missed his stop. In a last-minute vault out the pneumatic door, he just saved himself from landing face-first in a lane paved with pigeon droppings, and was immediately set upon by a skin-nipping wind.

Charming. Harry sorted himself out with a warming spell, scraped his trainers on the kerb, and looked around for guidance. The noisy fluttering of wings in the surrounding eaves was the only sign of life. Harry sighed and fetched out his map, seeing very few people as he walked on, shoulders hunched. The relentless cooing and trilling of grey-feathered squatters followed him down the street. He much preferred owls; they didn't make constant, inane conversation.

Sagging phone wires swayed overhead, adding waves of oscillating hum to the weird sense of desertion. Sniffing, Harry flattened his nose several times before realising the stink blew off the canal.

Soon enough he found the corner he was looking for and turned down it. This was the street. There was the house. He was mere minutes away from knocking on Snape's door.

The buildings here were poorer, downtrodden, semi-detached with snippets of garden space. Holdovers from a different era, they all seemed to be marking time, like old-age pensioners with gin-blossom faces and shabby overcoats huddled on park benches. Weeds congregated along property lines, and even the wadded-up clouds overhead looked like used tissues. It looked like there'd been a health-services clean-up at some point, but nothing Muggle could leach a century's worth of caked soot out of the old brick.

Harry got behind a dried-out bit of box hedge, stuffed the map in a pocket, and wriggled under his cloak. Wand in hand, shivery with anticipation, he made straight for the house at the end, where he—

—found himself at the corner, heading home. If he hurried, he would most likely arrive before—

What the hell? Confused, he glanced over his shoulder and spotted his cloak lying at some distance behind him, discarded and shimmering on the pavement. Alarmed, he ran back and had barely sunk his fingers into the silky folds before he realised he was late, horribly, inexcusably late, and he'd only be in time if he Apparated now, hurry, not a moment to lose, they would never forgive him if—

At the corner again, Harry caught himself one second before Disapparating in full view of the encircling windows. Shite. Stupid of him not to expect Snape's house to be warded up the bunghole. He thumbed his forehead, driving out the last wisp of anxiety. That kick-arse compulsion charm was no joke.

Bugger. He hadn't prepared for this very well. Nothing for it, best to regroup. The abandoned millyard over there would make a decent place for Apparition and he could always come back later.

He was folding up the cloak and eyeing Snape's doorway when a man—not too tall, wearing a bulky Fair Isle jumper—crossed the street, stamped up the front steps, did a knuckle-brush that barely qualified as a knock, probed with a key, forced the sticky door open with a rugby move, and vanished inside. The door slammed. Harry, drifting as close as the charm would allow, heard the tumblers of the Muggle locking mechanism click together, and there he was, still on the wrong side of things.

Now who could that be? Snape on Polyjuice? Was it possible Snape had a keeper? Or had Harry somehow managed to lay hands on the wrong address?

He was about to give it another go when something sharp tapped him in the back, and a voice declared, "Well, if it isn't old Potty." Not the voice he'd been expecting, not dark and triumphant, but too casually sneering to be a friend's.

Harry spun around, primed to cast Protego. His wand arm didn't waver, but it took his brain a lot longer than it should have to come up with a name. "Nott?"

Bloody buggering hell. Theo Nott, former classmate and member of Snape's house, son of a now-imprisoned Death Eater. Tarted up in Muggle jeans and a leather jacket. Clearly passing, just like Harry.

A Slytherin swanning about as a Muggle? It didn't get much more suspicious than that.

For a moment they both held their wands at vaguely threatening angles, then Nott lowered his and snapped, "What are you doing here?" A brusque wave of his arm encompassed the length and breadth of the brooding street. If he was referring to Snape's house, it wasn't obvious enough for Harry to call him on it.

Still, Nott's proprietary attitude confirmed his hunch. "Official business," he said, rather sharpish, not flinching from using his Ministry position as a blind. "Following up on reports of a disturbance." Nott's frown grew a shade less belligerent and a touch more alarmed, so Harry pressed the advantage. "You?"

"_Un_official business," Nott mimicked, sounding insinuating as if he knew Harry was lying, but at the same time searching his face with anxious eyes, on the look-out for Merlin knew what.

"Seriously?" Harry flicked a glance at the house.

"Seriously."

Harry debated. A chill was rising from the pavement, and he hadn't dressed half warmly enough. Overhead, rainclouds blackened the sky from end to end. The whole neighbourhood was depressing, and he wanted to go home.

But first he wanted to lay hold of solid evidence. "I thought— " Just to be disobliging, the wind raked his hair on end, and his fringe proceeded to flutter. Feeling ridiculous, Harry flattened it. "Thought we might both be keeping an eye on Snape."

Nott gave nothing away, but after a short silence he said, "Snape. Really."

"Yeah," Harry said. "Really."

He half-expected Nott to roll his eyes and heckle him with the same exasperated complaint he always got about there being something wrong with him for dwelling on the past. Or maybe he'd earn a disgusted look for mentioning the traitor's name. He doubted Snape was popular with the ex-Death Eater crowd.

Nott shifted to stare at the house as if seeking a second opinion, and there was nothing sullen, sinister, or spoiled in his profile. Harry wondered if the apparent gullibility of a Death Eater's son could be taken at face value.

When Nott turned around, though, he was scowling. "Look, are you here to give Snape a hard time? Because if you are, and that's all, you can sod right off."

A tense thrill shot through Harry, the tingling sense of imminent victory that used to make him grin at his partner right before the wrap-up of a dangerous case. Holy shite. This was it. This was the opening he'd been looking for. Nott had spoken of Snape as someone alive. Evidently the secret of the bastard's existence had been shopped out to a select few, Harry obviously not included.

"I'd just like to ask him a few questions," he said, aware the crowing note in his voice came dangerously close to proclaiming 'smug arsehole.' "Or I can take you in for questioning instead, if you prefer."

Nott snorted. "Don't pull your Ministry shite on me. I've got a legitimate reason to be here, which I wager is more than you can claim."

"Legitimate? What, being part of the 'Suck up to Snape' brigade?"

"Hah. I'll let the others know you said so. Always glad to have the opinion of the Boy Who Cast Expelliarmus." The rising wind had started moaning around the chimney pots, buffeting them at ground level and sweeping leaves and crumpled litter down the pavement. Zipping his jacket all the way up, Nott cocked his head and surveyed Harry with a knowing, exasperated gleam. The exasperation was almost benign, and Harry wasn't quite sure what to make of it. "For your information, Daphne already refers to us as 'Snape's harem,' a stupid fancy of hers I personally think implies sexual misconduct, which I predict will get the Professor in hot water some day. So we don't need you adding your sordid Gryffindor spin to it."

Others? Harry wondered. _Harem?_ The 'Expelliarmus' remark smarted. He blinked away a distracting flash of green and remembered he was here for a reason. Get Severus.

"Nott," he blurted, as if it had any bearing on their meeting whatsoever, "what were you doing in the headmaster's office the day Voldemort died?"

The other boy looked for a moment as if Harry had hexed all the air out of his lungs, and Harry expected he looked much the same. Nott _had_ been there, but until that second he hadn't remembered.

Recovering first, Nott sneered, "Well, I certainly wasn't hanging about playing fiddlesticks with my wand, if that's what you're asking. More than that isn't for me to say."

Still flustered by the sensation of a missing piece snapping into place, Harry said, "Look, I'm asking on my own behalf, not the Ministry's. I really need some answers, and you might be able to help. Suppose you and I arrange to Apparate up to Hogwarts. To the headmaster's office. There's someone I want you to talk to."

"You've no grounds for taking me anywhere, Potter, and you bloody well know it." Nott shook his head and hunched his shoulders against a few spots of rain. "You're a Seeker, not a Beater, so put the Bludger down and pull your neck in. I've no connection whatsoever to the 'disturbance' you're here to investigate, assuming that's not just some convenient bunch of twaddle. So shut it, all right? You're not going to impress me with your threats."

Damn. Harry had lost the gamble, and been neatly one-upped to boot. He should have taken into account that he wasn't the only one who might have done some growing up. "Well, it was worth a try," he said, and Nott smirked. "Do me a favour, then," Harry added. "Tell Snape I want to talk to him."

"Not a chance." A few more drops spattered the pavement, and Nott turned to scrutinise a bundled-up, nondescript couple hauling shopping bags into a building across the road. "Merlin's balls," he said with sudden quiet vitriol more damning than any rude remark he'd flung at Harry so far. "I'm trying to imagine any situation that would convince me it's not a jolly _swinish_ move to set you loose on the Professor."

The wind had worked its way up to banshee wailing, and with no further warning the clouds started pissing down in cold, wet earnest. Water streamed down Harry's face and under his collar, and he had to spell his glasses to keep the rain off or he'd be blind. The already gloomy buildings darkened under the onslaught as if resigned to their fate. Cripes. It was time to get out of there.

He didn't expect Nott to swing back around and prod him emphatically in the chest. "Leave. Snape. Alone. I'm not joking, Potter. Bad things happen around you, and I don't want him getting hurt just because you're a walking disaster area."

For Merlin's sake. Even a random bloke from a rival house treated Harry as an unacceptable risk.

Half soaked through, he still couldn't walk away without a parting shot. "So you're, what, Snape's guard dogs? I can't imagine anything he's got on offer being worth the trouble."

"Oh sure, that's us. Me and Daph and Blaise, guard dogs. The three-headed kind."

Nott made a disgusted noise, spraying rainwater. His gloved hands turned up the collar of his puffy, shiny jacket, and he fingered the dangly silver bits and bobs sewn over his pockets, peering at Harry through his already dripping fringe. Even drenched, he looked surprisingly dashing, which Harry had a hard time reconciling with his memories of Nott as just another weedy Slytherin prat.

"Keep this to yourself or I'll report you, got it? Fact is, Snape doesn't know. And don't think of being devilish clever by telling him, either, because he won't have a fucking clue what you're on about."

Harry had no intention of showing up at Snape's door looking well-nigh identical to a drowned rat, with Nott holding a cocky wand at his head. Grimacing, he said, "Fine. Tell the bastard cheers for me," and sprinted for the mill, barely slowing down to return the two-fingered salute Nott jabbed at his back.

He spent the evening alone at Grimmauld Place, drinking bitters and jotting notes. He couldn't sit still and kept getting up to pace, re-play the conversation in his head, and refresh his glass. It made him crazy to know Snape was alive. Not that he intended to tell anyone, at least not until he figured out who had gone to such trouble to keep Snape's survival a secret. Was the Ministry involved? Was someone being paid off? Why was it so widely believed that Snape was dead?

Once the first flare of excitement died down, his frustration about that blasted day started gnawing at him again. He racked his brains trying to visualise the headmaster's office, Voldemort's body, and where the hell Snape had been during the fight. He couldn't see Nott there. What about Daphne? Meaning Greengrass, he reckoned. And Zabini, of course. Had they been there, too? The haze of green in his memory confounded him. He'd cast Expelliarmus, he was sure of it. Was that all, though?

He reckoned he ought to pay Hogwarts a visit and share what he'd learned with Dumbledore's portrait, but the idea of summarising his utter toss-down made him squirm.

By the time Molly's unwanted gift of a grandmother clock had started to scold, "Past two! Off to bed! (Past two!) With you! (Past two!) All bad boys! (Past two!) In bed! (Past two!) You'll be sorry! (Past two!) In the morning!" Harry was tipsily preoccupied with the question of how to acquire a leather jacket. Wobbling to his feet, he flourished his wand and gave it a Transfigurative go. But his robes sported a Malkin label and weren't susceptible to amateur re-fitting. Besides, the liquor botched his concentration. Stupidest of all, he forgot to include a zip. He ended up encased in something more like a wetsuit, which put a serious damper on things, ha ha.

If he was reduced to snorting at his own feeble puns, it was clearly time to pack it in.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

xxxxx

On Monday, Harry set thoughts of Snape aside and devoted several hours to the case analysis that was the most interesting work they let him do anymore. He missed being out in the field, but he couldn't argue with the injury incidence reports; too many of his partners had been hurt by pureblood sympathisers with a grudge against him.

That afternoon, betting on the likeliest place to find a conspiracy involving secrets, he took the lift down to the ninth floor. With no idea where to start, he spelled open the black door and ventured a few steps into the sombre, echoing hallway. Since his spell wedged the entryway open behind him, the twelve doors on either side shimmered a little but didn't revolve.

He was halfway across the glowing blue room when someone slipped soundlessly out of the Locked door. Caught trespassing, Harry stopped, resigned to interrogation and the likelihood of being booted back upstairs. But the short figure covered in a head shawl strode past him, unfazed by his presence.

"Excuse me," he called after her, and the woman turned at the entrance to the Death Chamber, with an air that said she'd been expecting it.

"Mr. Potter." In the bluish flicker, it was hard to tell her age, and the gleam in her large eyes was either amusement or curiosity, depending on the dance of light. Her lips were full, her smile tolerant but with a slight twist suggesting that nothing about wizardkind could possibly surprise her. "You've come about Severus Snape's wand, I see."

"What? No, I— " Harry hesitated, wondering if he shouldn't have said 'yes' instead. Whatever doubts he'd had that the Ministry was somehow involved in the cover-up had just been sent packing. "Actually, I'm here researching the charm protecting his house. I need access, and so far I haven't— "

A pocket watch, preposterously golden, floated up from her robes, flipped its circular lid, then hung in the blue gloom shining for all it was worth. Its chain trailed down into the woman's hand, the only thing that kept it from rising to the ceiling like a small, aggressive sun.

"Could I be early?" Her eyes widened and narrowed, widened and narrowed, as she peered at the dial, as if she were translating successive lines of miniscule script. "Oh, bother. No, you're late. Are you late? Yes, I'm sure of it." She reeled the watch back in and fiddled with the winding knob, re-setting it to some unknown timetable. "How very tiresome of you."

Harry wasn't sure whether she meant him or the watch. She frowned at the beaming timepiece until it gradually dimmed to a moon-like ivory, at which point she humphed and dropped it back into her robes, the chain drizzling after. A second later, the tail-end flipped insolently out the top of her pocket, switching hypnotically back and forth. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

"Late for what?" Harry knew to tread cautiously around Unspeakables, all of whom appeared to delight in using riddles to mock the unwary.

"It's not my job to help you figure that out," she said, still peevish. "I _had_ intended to set you a few tests, have you jump a few hoops. Fairytale measures of devotion and pureheartedness, that sort of thing. But apparently it's taken you the best part of three years merely to get around to making inquiries, so we'll just scotch that idea."

"Inquiries? About what?" Harry said, bewildered. "You mean Snape?"

"Oh, now you're going to fault me for crediting you with too much intelligence, is that it? I'll just pull my watch out, shall I, and make another adjustment, eh?"

"No, don't—look, it's—I have no idea what you're on about." He shook his head and rather shamefacedly pulled out the magic name. "Fact is, I'm here because Albus Dumbledore sent me."

The woman tugged her shawl tighter and flung the ends dramatically back over her shoulders. "Did he, now. You're sure of that? And you expect me to bow down, I suppose." With her face swaddled like that, her eyes looked positively uncanny, not to mention unimpressed. "What bunk. Please inform the dear man that he should feel free to hasten his flying leap into the next world if he's going to mess things about like this." Her shrewd face softened. "Although I do understand that he's in an unenviable position just now. That concerns us, of course."

"You mean his portrait." It mattered more than it should, perhaps, that Dumbledore had found the adventure he was looking for in death.

"I mean a lot of things, Mr. Potter." She reached down absentmindedly to tickle the watch chain, shaking free when the links tried to curl around her forefinger.

"However," she broke her troubled silence with sudden briskness, "punctuality is of the essence, and in order not to miss my next appointment I'm going to have to skip the preliminaries. I hope you're duly grateful."

She waited to be sure she had his undivided attention. "To answer your question: no spell or magical talisman is necessary to make yourself welcome at Spinner's End. No countercast. No Finite Incantatem. On the other hand, no wizard or magical being may cross the threshold without pronouncing the right words. Do you have a clue what those might be?"

Harry couldn't help it. "'Severus Snape is a greasy bastard and a murderous git?'"

There was a tiny pause, just long enough for Harry to feel ashamed he'd overstepped. "Forgive me," the woman said, her voice low, the flutter of blue candle flames on her dark face so hypnotic he couldn't look away.

Harry's embarrassment increased, but a second before he could blurt out that _he_ was the one who ought to apologise, it hit him. Oh, for Merlin's sake.

"You're joking, right? Oh, that's rich. How in the world does Snape enter his own house, then? Even supposing you could get him to say the words without holding a wand to his head, I imagine he'd choke first." He tried to stop there, he really did, but he was seeing the house and Snape's leather-jacketed watchdog and remembering the pitiful condition of Dumbledore's portrait. "And if he did somehow manage to spit them out without doing himself an injury, in all fairness some avenging angel of hypocrisy ought to swoop down and hex his tongue off."

The Unspeakable regarded him for a moment, then said in a curiously level voice, "Mr. Snape's entire existence at the moment could be seen as an enactment of those particular words. Alas for him, the world abounds in unforgivables, most of which—or _whom_—are not of the strictly magical sort."

Harry frowned at her pun on 'unforgivables' and the suggestion that he belonged in that company. Just because he wasn't interested in pandering to whatever morally questionable arrangement the Ministry had made with Dumbledore's murderer.

She pulled a scroll from her pocket, reviewed it, then grabbed a small quill dangling from a leather thong and scribbled a note. "I'm reminded yet again," she sighed, rolling the parchment back up, "why this constitutes a mystery in the first place."

Harry backtracked, realising that he ought to fish for information while the fishing was good. "What was it you meant earlier about his wand?"

"Here, what's this?" The Unspeakable raised the scroll in reproof. "I'm expected to do your job and mine, too? One thing at a time, Mr. Potter. If you can't figure it out for yourself, it'll be no never mind about your Mr. Snape _or_ his wand. His case and the mysteries surrounding it will be retired into the permanent collection."

"See, you keep calling it a mystery," Harry said, uneasy with the casual, unconcerned way she reached back and spread her fingertips on the door to the Death Chamber. "Which implies you want me to solve it. Do you? Does Professor Dumbledore?"

"I'm sure I have no idea of the headmaster's wishes," she sniffed. "We here don't deal in the types of mysteries that can simply be solved."

"But you just referred to it as a 'case.'"

"My dear young neophyte, for the last time: there's no single explanation, verdict, or conclusive fact that brings any of our investigations to a close. The central enigma may—in fact _must_—change with the passage of time. Change to something you didn't expect, even something you don't recognise. But it doesn't _end_. Merlin, no. It never ends." She laid a meditative hand against her breast, patting rhythmically, and then broke Harry's trance by reaching up to rub her face and smother a yawn. "Would you believe me if I claimed to offer you the meaning of life?"

She waited, as if it were a real question, so Harry bit out, "No, of course not."

"Well, then. I don't understand why my opinions should weigh in the slightest here, insofar as what your life means is _your_ business. If you follow me."

Harry didn't, but he shrugged as if it were theoretically possible he did. "But you called it—the question of Snape, right? You called it a case."

"Severus Snape is not the question."

"But you said— "

"I did," she said waspishly. "I don't deny there exists a case. One that originated in there," and she pointed to the demure and impervious door through which she'd appeared; the Locked Room, which sheltered the mysteries of love. "I've been puzzling over it since before you were born, and you would not believe the number of changes it's gone through. Your untimely appearance confuses the issue and makes me suspect I've been wasting _my_ time."

Harry looked down at his Ministry robes, black in the wavering blue light, at the wand clenched in his hand, at his motives, his loyalties. He wasn't beholden to this department. He wasn't a child any longer, or the answer to the wizarding world's prayers. But he was still, apparently, Dumbledore's man. "You mean this is about love?"

"I said it originated there. Where it will end up is anyone's guess."

"Is this a not-so-subtle hint that I ought to forgive Snape? Because, thanks all the same, but I'm not sure I can."

"Mr. Potter," she sighed, all indulgence fled, "humour me and repeat the plea for admission out loud."

Harry caught on a moment too late to cover his confusion. Damn it. "Forgive me," he snapped.

"To whom," the woman said, "are those words addressed?" When he flared up in protest, she pointed out, "There are other passwords you'd hate more, to other realms. But as far as I'm aware, 'forgive me' and 'forgive him' are considered separate undertakings by those who ponder these matters. I'm not saying the terms of forgiveness can't overlap. They do, more often than not. Although in your case I won't hold my breath." She snorted, and Harry, who'd been ready to pursue the distinction, shut his mouth again. "And I say 'case' with all due irony, since you certainly make me wonder.

"And now, if you'll excuse me, the time allotted for our appointment is up and I should go review my notes in preparation for the next."

"We had an appointment?" Harry frowned.

"You didn't," the Unspeakable said, "but I did. Although, as I'm sure I mentioned, I thought it was upwards of three years ago."

"So you know everything I'm going to do before I do it?" Harry said. "Where's the mystery in that?"

"Young man, I believe I just made it clear that I _didn't_ know."

"Merlin. All right. This doesn't make sense." He ran one hand through his hair. "Sorry, I'm not trying to be rude. I just don't understand."

"We're even, then," the woman said. "Because neither do I. But that's my job, you see. I'm not looking for endings. These kinds of mysteries _have_ no end. They are, by their very nature, insoluble." She studied him, her face tinged with momentary sympathy. "But not—are you paying attention, Mr. Potter? Not hopeless. Not out beyond influencing. You mustn't be afraid to embrace what you don't understand."

She spoke with the kind of brisk encouragement that Harry associated with teachers who'd been shepherding students through the same subjects for decades: wry, tired in the way of someone entrusted with a responsibility that both fortifies and consumes them.

The eerie blue light retreated around her, as if she'd spelled herself into shadow; or perhaps it was some sort of signal. The Unspeakable's smile didn't relent, didn't move in the slightest, yet inside his head Harry was sure he heard her say, "Because for those of us who give our lives in service to the unknown, these are the things of ultimate importance. To help others ask questions they might otherwise ignore. Or," she said aloud, the spoken words a startling contrast to the mental intimacy, "in your case, forget."

Her eyes locked on Harry's, and this time he detected the insidious touch of a Legilimens. "Especially two such as you, whose choices have always split the difference— "

The voice shifted suddenly, darker, venomous, a voice Harry knew from the classroom, from his past; more recently, from his dreams.

He found himself flung back, Expelliarmus-style, staggering in the hallway without quite knowing how he'd got there. The black door slammed in his face with such force that the backdraft nearly knocked him off his feet. In his ears, the unexpected memory of Snape's voice rang fiercely, with no forgiveness at all.

"_The difference, you stupid child, between love and death_."

xxxxx

Feeling less than enlightened but armed now with evidence that the Ministry was sheltering Snape, Harry put in for an afternoon off work. In the time between, Ginny ribbed him for his constant woolgathering and midweek lost her temper, blowing up in his face for ignoring her. Harry blamed his distraction on current developments in his latest Unspeakable project, a half-truth that made him feel slightly rotten. Rather than row about it, she let it slide. Merlin, if she only knew.

At week's end he tidied his desk, cast a hands-off hex over his papers, rolled together a bunch of official-looking scrolls, and waved his mates cheers. Unable to stop his morning-mirror smile from taking over his face, he kept his head down and ducked into the gents to exchange his robes for the leather jacket he'd scored in a Muggle boutique. Heading out, he ignored the catcalls from Clappert and Entwhistle, who jostled him in the hall on their way to the showers after a no-holds-barred session on hex strategies.

Harry Apparated in behind the millyard fence onto the grass-grown, mucky pavingstones. It was sunnier today, and the stink was milder. He sundered the padlock and let the chain chatter with a ringing smack to the ground. He could tell he was already strung too tight, like an antenna wire overloaded by a single frequency. Snape was still as much of an unproven theory, a vibrating voice in his nightmares, as ever. His very elusiveness made it hard to shake the sense that he existed only in Harry's mind; and if so, how was Harry ever going to be rid of him? Not half lucky they hadn't crossed paths yet, because he'd likely wrap that vibrating wire right around the bastard's neck.

The harem evidently didn't hang about much, either. Just as well. Nott's lie seemed awfully toothless; Slytherins being droll, ha ha, pull the other one.

Anywhere else, the brief saunter through the sunshine would have done him good. But if buildings could mimic bloodshot eyes and unshaven faces, these surely did. Rain or sun, the neighbourhood stayed grotty, flinty, and hipshot, listing sideways on sinking foundations. The exhilaration of spring utterly disgraced it, showing up dirt, cracks, erosion, a hundred heartless details. The light beaming from the heavens rubbed in how destitute it was. Here and there shy touches of blooming life took pity: gaunt black trees glowing at the tips with candle-like blossoms, tangled vines waxing green along scabby brickwork, flakes of undernourished colour like wet confetti marking where the yearly crocuses straggled up.

Already sweaty in his new jacket, Harry walked past the house that shared a wall with Snape's and muttered under his breath, "Forgive me."

He took an experimental step forward. His mind clouded for an instant, and he repeated quickly, "Forgive me," putting a bit more conviction into it. One cautious foot after another, pronouncing the magic words whenever the spell tried to confuse him, he prowled up the Spinner's End steps. At the top, he squeezed, "Forgive me," through his teeth one last time and rapped on the door. He could feel the smile on his face, and didn't care. All along it had been meant for Snape, not for terrifying loo mirrors and innocent house elves.

He waited, fidgeting. Pity the use of excessive force was frowned upon; he'd enjoy blasting the heavy door off its hinges.

The scrolls crackled as he tightened his hold on the wand hidden inside them and knocked again, tempted to use the side of his fist and bang impatiently.

"Who you looking for, love?"

Startled, Harry spun around. A young woman with peroxide-blonde hair, raccoon eyeliner, black fingernails, and a jacket that was mostly black fishnet lace was just locking the door to the neighbouring house.

The sudden panicky desire to Disapparate seized him, and his brain fogged up. "Forgive me!"

The neighbour shoved her keys into her handbag and snorted a rude laugh through her nose. "A bit jumpy there, mate. Don't worry, I'm not going to report you for knocking on doors."

"Erm. Severus Snape?" Rattled, he held up the sheaf of parchment. "He lives here, right?"

"Says so on the postal box, don't it? Skinny bloke with a fierce conk and hair down to here? Dead sexy in a fuck-you sort of way, never gives a girl a decent break?"

He must have looked totally Confunded. The girl hooded her eyes like a cat who's just spotted a reality-challenged mouse.

"Eh, don't you fret, sweetheart, no one's laid a finger on your boyfriend. Figure he'd sooner bite my head off than let himself be drawn into convo. Sometimes it's that hard not to feel like a pile o' shite he's just stepped in." She smiled brightly, as if struck by a passing thought. "Nice arse, though, right?"

The air in Harry's lungs attempted to enter and exit simultaneously. He fetched up a sucking gulp, like an unstoppered drain, and used the opportunity to mutter, "Forgive me."

Slyly, his informant extended the paw of conversation and cuffed him again. "Got a problem with that? Eh, looking's free. Used to hope he'd look back, too, but I've a fair idea now that's one of them cases of snowballs and hell."

If she'd had whiskers she would have sat back on her haunches and started to groom them. Harry shook his head. Every single sentence coming out of her mouth was so wrong he didn't know where to start. Or whether he should. Best to keep things simple.

"I just— " It was necessary, after all, to clear his throat. "I need him to sign some papers, ma'am. Do you know when he'll be in?"

She clattered down the steps in her black ankle-boots and patted her pockets, taking inventory of all the items a well-equipped twenty-something needed to roam the streets. "Our gent keeps pub hours, lad. Got hisself a steady gig at a tavern three streets over. You might catch him there, otherwise you've a wait. Two streets up, take a right and it's at the next corner. Place called—ah, bugger, now, I've gone and lost it. Bull's Balls or summat. The local shopkeepers all know it to swear at. You'll find him, I wager. Good luck on ya when you do."

"Forgive me," he said again, feeling like an idiot, "but— "

She waved him silent with the mock-solemn words, "Be at peace, my son. All your sins'll be forgiven," then snickered and strode off down the lane past mats of dried crabgrass, pivoting briefly on a spiked heel, finger upraised. "Word of warning, love. You might want to keep your back to the wall in there. Some of the gents've got grabby hands, like." Taking a smart left, she clicked away across the road, the sun turning her blonde frizz to a gossamer shimmer.

Harry watched her go, then sighed, extracted his wand, shoved the scrolls inside his jacket, and still muttering the charmed words under his breath, set out to follow her directions.

xxxxx

Bull's Eye. The irony made him smirk.

The pub straddled a turning, grilleworked windows on each red-brick flank, on the near side a greengrocer's with overpriced fruit and veg piled in wooden stalls under a torn awning. Untrimmed ivy trailed up the tidy frontage, the upper storey like the prow of a ship with the entrance recessed below. A wooden shingle creaked in the breeze; above it, speared on a pike, the bull's head from a carousel ride flourished its horns.

Utterly devoid of a plan, Harry paced back and forth, nerving himself to push through the double doors. _Forgive me_ popped into his head, and he groaned. That was getting old fast. Gilt lettering flashed in the glazed panes as he entered.

Eyes adjusting, he sized up the amber-lit room. Tables, a third of them occupied, were scattered around several timber posts. Just inside the door, two leather-cushioned carved-oak booths like choir stalls created a sense of rustic intimacy. An unlit brick fireplace was built into the west wall, reminding Harry of the Gryffindor common room. Art-nouveau curlicues of potted ivy, far more manicured than the shaggy mess outside, tinted the sunlight slanting through latticed panes. A swinging door with a porthole window slapped onto what must be the kitchen. Behind the glossy stretch of bar, fitted with brass rails at the order station, squat decanters and slender bottles wrapped in fancy paper labels glinted on shelves.

Between the glitter and the gloss, Snape stood gazing at Harry with no expression on his face whatsoever.

Snape _stood_… Oh God. It was him. Snape. Alive. Holy crap. Snape. He was standing _right there_. He was standing there, utterly cold and calm, as if Harry were the most humdrum sight in the world.

Dumbledore had been right. Nott hadn't been kidding. Snape was _alive_.

A silent roar rushed through Harry's chest as if his heart were the Hogwarts train on a bender, Dementors plastered shrieking to its windows. He didn't back out the door, and his nerve didn't fail, but his emotions started whirling in so many directions he had to reach sideways for support and lean his way through a bout of temporary vertigo. He even had a serious second or two of thinking he was about to vomit.

_Snape_.

Not dead. Not dead at all. Not even all that much changed.

_Raise your wand and cast, you berk. Now. Before he grabs the advantage_.

Could he risk it? Blast, too many Muggles about. From the corner of his eye Harry counted probably a dozen patrons, a waiter, a bearded bloke stooping to heave a trapdoor up and over. The floor boomed. Yes, he could Obliviate them all, but—

But. Harry sank into the empty booth nearest the door and scrunched into his squeaky new jacket, crackling with fake official papers. His upper lip prickled, clammy, but at least his heart and guts had sorted themselves back into their proper spheres.

It was real. Cripes. He'd thought he was mentally prepared for this. But then he'd believed it, he'd _believed_ the bastard was dead. All this time—_all this fucking time_—he'd been here. Right here. Free. Unpunished. As ugly and arrogant as Harry remembered.

As alive.

'Get Severus,' Dumbledore had said. And he'd left it up to Harry to decide what that meant. So what did it mean? What did he want it to mean? Gloves off, here. He wanted Snape to—oh God, stop existing. Stop plaguing the world. To just—cease to be. 'Forgive me,' his arse. He wanted him _dead_.

The hairs bristled on the back of his neck, and for a moment he wondered if the best thing he could do was to stand up right now, slip out the door, and leave Snape to eke out the rest of his miserable existence serving alcohol in a Muggle pub.

Something clattered behind him, and Harry nearly shot full-tilt out of the booth. Shite. He'd bashed a condiment caddy with his elbow. Clumsy tit. He righted it again, keeping his wand in shadow and trained on Snape. The room smelled of beer, boiled beef, shaving cologne, the drowsy odour of stubbed-out fags and smoky breath. It was the perfect, slightly brimstone stench for the tension that yellowed the air. Thank Merlin malice wasn't magic or Harry would already be at Snape's mercy, writhing like a snake on the varnished floorboards.

Flaunting his disdain, Snape pretended, after one body-raking glare, to ignore him.

Well. He could use a drink. Maybe he should take this so-called bull by the horns and go order one.

A heavy stamping sound echoed from the open trap, and bit by bit the whiskery gent, neck and ears red, lurched into view, swearing as he shouldered a rattling cardboard box out onto the floor. Snape walked over without waiting to be summoned, squatted to get a good grip, then heaved the box up and toted it back to the counter. The cellar man emerged, and the floor under Harry's feet shook as he slammed the trap shut. Grabbing a bar rag to dust his hands and wipe his neck dry, the bloke strode for the kitchens.

As he passed, he dealt Snape a whopping great blow on the back.

Harry winced, sure an explosion was in order. Snape's face went, if possible, blanker and tighter. The swinging door flapped to a standstill behind the burly figure, and that was that. No one else sensed anything amiss.

Bar towel flung over the offended shoulder, Snape set to in silence, extracting bottles from the box dividers and restocking the shelves with the concise grace of a wizard accustomed to juggling delicate or unstable ingredients.

Harry felt oddly cheated. Snape's temper could have given him the opening he needed. Apparently not. Now what?

Peppy music thumped from a chrome jukebox stashed in the darts alcove, its repetitive beat lulling at low volume. Glass clinked sweetly at Snape's fingertips. Harry had reasoned that the first chance he got, the bastard would either do a runner or come stalking over to loom and threaten. But no, of course not. Snape couldn't be arsed to do something just because Harry expected it.

A bird-boned, weatherbeaten gent with bouffant blond hair left his table and went to lounge inside the order station. Snape tipped two fingers of whisky into successive shot glasses, followed by a pint of dark ale pulled from the tap. The customer said something and gave the sort of laugh that spirals merrily through a room. Snape said nothing.

As he bustled off with a tray to deliver the whiskies to his waiting friends, the man sent Harry a cheery lift of the eyebrows. Catching this friendly overture meant Harry took his eyes off Snape for half a second, and the distraction made him flick his wand up in alarm. But when he looked again, Snape had—

Snape had turned his back.

The hell? Harry scowled at the immaculate white shirt flaunting its contempt for any threat he posed. The notoriously greasy hair had got longer, and it trailed between Snape's shoulder blades like—slime, maybe? Harry's Snape-baiting was out of practise. At least the pub management made him tie it back. He gave them points for enforcing a stricter standard of personal hygiene than Hogwarts ever had.

All right. Nothing for it. It was time to stop cowering in a corner and force the issue.

Harry shoved out of his seat and stalked toward the bar.

Sharp black eyes tracked his approach in the mirror advertisement installed behind the till. For a moment, in the brightly lettered glass, their stares touched. Harry felt a strange click inside him, as if a key had just turned in a lock. The moment trembled with the pressure of a door swinging open. All the tension he carried around with him pushed forward, raw and red, eager to attack anything in its path.

_Get Severus_.

As if hearing the unspoken threat, Snape swivelled around. In one hand he gripped a jug of Bailey's and in the other a black glass bottle with a Merlot label. Where in Merlin's name was his wand? A wizard with a price on his head should at least take care to leave his wand hand free.

Harry had to admit he made a right convincing Muggle. No wonder he'd been such a consummate spy.

Resting both bottles on the prep counter, Snape inquired with the abrupt courtesy of one interrupted mid-task, "May I help you?"

The voice hit him. It fucking _hit_ him. It slid down Harry's insides like a memory potion, and the past blossomed painfully inside his gut.

It had been nearly three years since he'd heard Snape's voice vibrating off the walls of the headmaster's office. Since then, it had afflicted him only in dreams, shouting inside the hollow places, haunting the emptiness. The voice in the mental wilderness. The voice of the hunter. He'd forgotten how dark and cold it was, how many memories were bottled in that sound alone.

His first impulse was to clamber over the maplewood bar, with its toothpicks and cork coasters and napkin dispensers, fasten his hands around Snape's scrawny neck, and squeeze and shake and _shake_ until he'd snapped the bastard's voice in two.

He didn't, of course. He'd learned a few things since the war.

Snape's black eyes gleamed at him, one arched brow writing a line of impatient boredom across the hanging silence. Harry looked straight at the narrow planes of his face, stark without the curtains of hair, and waited for the carefully worded insult, the contemptuous sneer.

Snape maintained the look of ungracious tolerance for longer than expected. Then his eyes flinched shut, like someone with a stabbing headache. Harry wondered if the Ministry had somehow devised an electric-shock spell that hexed offenders every time they experienced murderous impulses.

But no, it was only the slow, squeezed care of a thought being held in check. When Snape's eyes opened again, he was disconcertingly present; a tinge of colour outlined the bones of his face. The bottles rang as he set them aside, unseeing, his fingertips slipping to the counter's edge.

Harry, in turn, tapped his wand against the scrolled rim of the bar.

Snape glanced at it but didn't otherwise react. "Do I know you?" The question was whispery, half a breath, delivered with a low, ragged edge.

Harry's own breath quickened in answer, and his skin prickled with battle-readiness. It was no less than he'd expected, the black eyes searing over him, good, yes. But shouldn't there be more? Where were the revulsion and malice? He'd come prepared for smouldering hatred. He'd got the smoulder part right, but he needed—there had to be something—

There _was_ something. A slight high-strung eagerness vibrated all through Snape's body, curving toward him instead of away. Which made no sense at all. Harry glanced over his shoulder, thinking someone else had walked up behind him. Not a soul. For crying out loud, this was Snape. Snape would never look at _him_ with such—he didn't know what to call it. This was Snape staring at Harry almost as if—as if he didn't—

With an internal crack like glass giving way, a burst of sharp feelings erupted all through him.

_I'd advise you to forget that Snape ever existed_.

The jagged insight embedded itself with the force of revelation, and Harry clutched it to him: the secret Kingsley Shacklebolt had refused to share.

His lips skinned back in a grin. _I've got you_, he thought fiercely. _I've got you, you bastard, and you don't even know it_.

In that exhilarating instant, standing hugging the truth, Harry saw his way clear. Half-strangled by the need to conceal his excitement, he blurted, "I've never been here before, so no. No, I don't think we've met." Greatly daring, he set down his wand and presented his hand.

"Jamie Black," he lied, testing Snape with his insolence. "Pleased to meet you."

A cool hand, longer and bonier than his own, pressed his, palm to palm. "Severus Snape," said his quarry, without the faintest twitch of recognition.

Elated and repelled, pulse running wild, Harry squeezed Snape's hand harder than he'd meant to. The answering pressure anchored him. It was like being woven into the spaces between Snape's fingers, as if Snape were inviting him to slide over the bar and down into his twilight world of misplaced identities and bottled intoxication.

That Snape touched him at all was high on Harry's ick list of unnatural occurrences, but he could manage. He could put up with it in exchange for what it proved.

It came to him, then, that they had an audience. Everyone in the pub was watching, some covertly, most as if it were the best free entertainment they'd had all week, observing how their hands slid together, how they stood a moment too long, as if passing stolen goods between them. Harry still had his smile, Snape his eyes, which catalogued Harry with knowing irony.

It was a look that matched the Snape Harry knew, and for a moment he doubted. To be wrong, in these circumstances, could be fatal.

Then Snape let him go and said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "Do you know what you want?"

Blushing slightly, Harry savoured the joke, and something—it was all surmise, all somethings, hints and glimmers, because he really didn't know this man at all—but something, responding to the stain in his skin, spread from one corner of Snape's mouth to the other. It was only a smile, and a faint one at that, but to Harry it seemed threaded with an even deeper secret, dark pink along the closed seam of Snape's lips.

He made a quick show of patting his pockets. Damn. He'd never dreamt that for this particular outing he might need Muggle currency.

Snape gave a ghost of his old condescending snort and turned away. "It's on me, Mr. Black. Go back to your table. I'll sure Hugh won't mind delivering your pint." Harry noticed that the small blond man had come up alongside him and was waiting with bright-eyed interest to place his order. "Light or dark?" Snape drawled. "Or do your tastes run to mixes?"

"Light," Harry said with self-conscious irony, adding, "Thanks. Call me Jamie." The look that earned him, as Snape curled his fingers around the tap handle and gave it a slow pull, should have left welts it was so intense.

Harry backed away, not sure why he was blushing again. He walked the gangplank between interested stares, prickling more from Snape's eyes on his back than from any other exposure, and slipped into his booth before letting out a breath. He was still having trouble controlling the shakes when Hugh arrived with a pint in each hand. Harry knocked half of his back in one go. He wanted to clutch this discovery to him and examine it on every side, plot out every advantage it gave him. It was bizarre. It was _perfect_. He needed to tell Dumbledore right away.

Alas, Hugh showed no sign of leaving him in peace. "Drink up," he urged, "and I'll fetch you another. You deserve it, lad. I've never seen anyone get past the Professor's stone face before, and you managed it in about five seconds flat."

Harry jerked back. "Professor?"

Hugh eyed him a moment as if mulling his reaction, then shrugged. "Eh, some of us calls him that. Not to say he likes it, understand. Not a free and easy chap at the best of times, but you can pound the pavement all over this town and not find a better bartender. He can mix you any poison you like, and he's a marvel with the drunks and roustabouts. The trade finds him a little intimidating, like. Even the roughs know better than to cut up on his watch."

He turned to wink at his friends in case one of them needed seeing to, then held up a finger to say he'd be there in a tick. Snape had finished his re-stock. His back to them, he moved down the bar, and Hugh parked a confiding hip at Harry's table.

"Clive, see, swears 'e grew up around these parts. Went and qualified years back for some Scottish academy, all fancy-dancy." Hugh wiggled a disdainful hand. "Educated hisself right out of the neighbourhood. Then something went pear-shaped and here he is back again. Always was a strange 'un, Clive says."

"Clive?"

"The bull himself." Hugh nodded toward the kitchens. "Owns this den of iniquity, lad. If I was a loyal servant I'd keep me mouth shut, but I've a soft spot for young tadpoles, so a word to the wise. He's got a stake in your Professor. Comes on kind of proprietary, does Clive. Don't expect that'll slow the Professor down much, if he's a mind to slip the leash. I thought for a second there he was going to yank you across the bar and treat us all to a show." He looked fondly at Harry. "Can't blame him, s'truth."

"Sorry?" Harry's heart started to thud. He suddenly couldn't look Hugh in the face.

"No offence meant, but what the two of you were doing is known in the common parlance as eye-fucking." Harry could hear the indulgence in his voice. "For such a forbidding-looking bloke, the Professor's aces at that, you notice?"

Heat flashed so consumingly up Harry's face it was a miracle his hair didn't catch fire. Battling the urge to slouch down in his seat, he made a quick tally. The custom, the staff, the owner—all men. He wasn't sure what that proved. Well, all right, those two over there were evidently a couple, once you knew what to look for. And another thing: Snape was the youngest by a decade, if you didn't count Harry himself. Which Harry didn't.

Right, then. The Bull's Eye looked fair to be a neighbourhood pub catering to older gay men. Snape was here tending bar, and it hardly needed pointing out that his eye for people's foibles was quicker and nastier than Harry's would ever be.

Chances were, therefore, that Snape was a poof.

Everyone in the pub, therefore, had no doubt assumed that Harry was showing an interest in Snape.

Snape, if Harry's speculations were correct, therefore thought the same thing: that Harry had been chatting him up because—because he wanted to—

Cripes.

The phrases _nice arse_ and _dead sexy in a fuck-you sort of way_ weaselled in through the backdoor of his memory, and the ale in his stomach went off. It yielded a decidedly ulcer-ish bubbling and boiling, such as might be found in a potions cauldron under full steam.

"The loo?" he mumbled.

"Hallway belowstairs." Hugh cocked a jaunty thumb. "While you're at it, I'll nip to the bar for round two. Same again?"

Harry didn't want to feel beholden, but he also knew better than to rebuff a friendly connection. And he desperately needed to sort things out. Not that bogs were all that conducive to brainstorming, but it would do until he could beat a retreat. "Thanks. Next time I'm in the neighbourhood, I'll stand you a pint."

Hugh waved him off. "No strings." He favoured Harry with a sly, stir-it-up grin. "Fancy seeing how the Professor reacts when I pick up your tab. He's a close 'un, like I says, but there's a look he gets sometimes as could kill a cat at fifty paces."

_Not just cats_, Harry wanted to say, but he covered his mouth as if quelling a burp.

Hugh stood a moment longer rolling the froth-smeared glass from hand to hand. "My Niles used to be private like that, but he hadn't a grain of murder in his soul." His face as he said this looked raked-out and cheerless, like a grate where no fire's been laid for months. Though his cheeks had the stubble-less gleam of cosmetic youth, the skin around his eyes was withered. Harry had seen that look before: on Remus, after Sirius fell.

Two pints later, Harry decided he'd laid enough ground for one day. A mite wobbly, he swung past the bar to take his leave. "Thanks for the drink, Severus. I owe you." He noticed, too late, that he'd placed special emphasis on Snape's first name. It felt forbidden and somehow appalling on his tongue, like sexual innuendo. He half-expected it to shock the git out of his protective ignorance. "My treat next, okay?"

Snape didn't glance up as he sent a stream of vermouth into a cocktail shaker. A long blade of hair fell across his eyes, but he tucked it back and continued swapping out bottles and pouring and measuring without acknowledging Harry's existence.

Right. Time to push. "So, which days are you on shift?"

With surgical precision, Snape filled three lightly-frosted martini glasses to identical levels. He popped olives on toothpicks into two and set a twist of lemon on the rim of the third. Only then did he deign to look at Harry. His eyes were hard, but there was a shadow of uncertainty around his mouth. "Every day except Sundays and Mondays," he got out, just before the kitchen door banged open and Clive shoved up at his elbow.

Harry recognised him now: the bloke in the Fair Isle jumper.

"You been helped?" Clive barked, his accent clanging like a bell. He was thickset, bossy, with the swaggering confidence of a man who handled himself well in a street fight. His head was all over bristles of the gingery sort, greying along his jawline to a neat border clipped like a box hedge. He gave Harry a keen once-over, twitched the smart, suspicious eyebrows of a sheepdog keeping its flock in line, then, apparently coming to the same conclusion as Hugh, clapped a brusque hand on Snape's shoulder, laying claim.

Snape looked for half a second as if he'd gladly Cruciate them all to bits and pieces. Then he locked down his face. A tad rusty, but he still had a spy's reflexes on tap.

Since there was nothing more to say, Harry grinned and got out of it.


End file.
